Krayzelburg's crazy quest

He's 28, but the often-injured 2000 Olympic gold medal winner isn't ready to get out of the pool

July 27, 2004|By Skip Myslenski, Tribune staff reporter.

Yes, there were days when he was ready to chuck it all, days that stretched into weeks that rolled over into months when he was tempted to throw up his hands and simply walk away into retirement.

Why not? He was a former world-record holder and was closing in on 30. He was the owner of three gold medals from the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and he was trying to compete with a shoulder that had been operated on twice and would require a third surgical procedure.

His deteriorating condition had forced him to give up the 200-meter backstroke, his favorite event, and as he trained for the 100 back, it was threatening to rob him of his career completely. It was the pain. It was those sessions when he took a stroke and the shoulder joint slipped out of place and he lost all sensation in his left arm. Then he would feel the water with his right hand, and a stroke later he would feel nothing, nothing at all.

"It has been really frustrating," he said. "There were quite a few days. Not lately. I think I've maintained pretty good care of it lately. Or at least I've been able to manage the pain. But November, December, January, for about four months from late November, a lot of days were, `Why am I doing this, why am I going through this?'"

And the answer is?

"I think more than anything I still enjoy the sport of swimming," Krayzelburg said. " . . . Ultimately, I think whenever a person has the opportunity to do something like this . . . Opportunities like this exist only once in a lifetime. I know I've accomplished this [before]. But the opportunity's still there and I'm going to pursue it as well.

"You have to look at the bigger picture. And ultimately the bigger picture is I still think I'm good enough, in that small window of being healthy, to compete and win."

Krayzelburg did not win the 100 backstroke at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials. That victory went to Aaron Peirsol. But somehow, some way, with considerable will and despite diminished skill, he ignored pain and rushed through the last 10 meters of the race, passed Peter Marshall just before the finish and touched the wall second to earn a trip to the Olympics next month in Athens.

"I turned around and looked at who got first and saw it was me, which was pretty sweet," Peirsol, a former teammate of Krayzelburg, said later. "But I couldn't see who had finished second. I was waiting to hear. Then I heard Lenny yelling. I cracked up because I was so elated for him. . . . It just shows you how tough a guy Lenny is."

Others were excited as well.

"I was jumping up and down. I was more excited for him than I was for my own swim," said Lindsay Benko, who earlier that night had qualified for the finals of the 200-meter freestyle. "He has a great story and he's a phenomenal athlete and just an all-around great guy. That's what makes it so important."

That is also why, in the wake of his success, Krayzelburg was showered with warmth and appreciation, with love and admiration. People grabbed him and hugged him. People gave him high-fives. People slapped him on the back and smiled at him. Benko, when she spotted him, broke off an interview to dash over and kiss him.

"I kind of had to hold back the emotions after this one," Krayzelburg said moments later. "Four years ago, things came a lot easier for me. At the trials and the Games, I was favored and I dominated. This time around it was a lot tougher. So I had to hold back quite a bit of emotion. It was a long journey."

For Krayzelburg, 28, the journey began a year after the Sydney Games, where he won gold in the 100 and 200 back and in the 400-medley relay. That is when he first had surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left shoulder. Twelve months later he had more surgery to repair a knee injury, and 12 months after that he underwent another operation on the shoulder.

In the midst of all this he was changing affiliations, moving from longtime coach Mark Shubert of USC to the Irvine (Calif.) Novaquatics.

"It was time to move," Krayzelburg said. "For about a year before that I felt I needed to go somewhere else. I just felt my training got a little bit stagnant."

He left the highly respected Shubert, who will coach the U.S. women's team in Athens, and abandoned his traditional training routine, which is often an athlete's security blanket.

Four years earlier, in the lead-up to Sydney, he had been the bullet-proof terminator. Now he was no longer infallible, he was eminently beatable. His body told him that and, all these new realities added to the challenge already presented by the pain.

"You can think that way, but I've been fortunate not to think that way," he said.